(Editor’s note: Members of the families in these stories are referred to by pseudonyms since they have been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.)
One refugee family is planning to stay in Juneau, putting their faith in God despite receiving orders to leave the country immediately. Members of another plan to flee this week to join relatives who have found safe haven in Canada.
Both families fled what they called life-threatening circumstances in their home countries and entered the United States legally via the asylum process. One made a perilous journey from Venezuela over many months through several countries, unable to find a safe existence in stops they made along the way. The other family flew here directly from Haiti with the necessary visas.
Both say they’ve established stable and engaging lives in Juneau, and have similar messages for President Donald Trump and his supporters who are ordering foreigners to get out or else.
“I know there are people who have experienced situations with foreigners, and the West is seeing what bad foreigners who have come to the country can do, which I’m totally against,” said Isabella, who spent more than a year making a journey through jungles and cities — facing life-threatening situations in both — to get from Venezuela to the U.S. with her husband and teenage daughter. “They deserve to be deported, but the problem is that they put us all in the same bag. In every country, there are good people, in every country, there are bad people, and when you approve mass deportations, you’re approving everyone being kicked out. And that’s where I don’t agree, where we as a family don’t agree. Not all of us are bad.”
Isabella’s family received a “Notice of Termination of Parole” dated April 11, declaring, “It is time for you to leave the United States” within seven days. However, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security subsequently acknowledged some of the notices sent to hundreds of thousands of families were in error and legal challenges to the notices are pending.
Ana, who came from Haiti to Juneau more than a decade ago to join her parents and other relatives who’d already relocated, said she was facing an unsafe situation in her country that has forced other relatives to relocate here in the years since. Five of those family members recently fled to Canada and more were packing to depart during a visit by the Empire to one of their homes last weekend. They arrived in the U.S. with proper visas or by following other legal procedures that Trump now seeks to invalidate.
“We are not illegal,” Ana said. “We are not criminal. We are here to have a better life. Just give us a chance.”
Members of Ana’s family were targeted by a DHS order requiring refugees from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti to depart the U.S. by April 24. The legality of that order is also being challenged.
However, the Trump administration has defied numerous court rulings — including a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a man officials acknowledge was improperly sent to a megaprison in El Salvador. Thousands of migrants have been falsely listed as legally dead by the Social Security Administration in an effort to force them to self-deport by cutting off their access to banks, employment and other essential services.
Legal visitors and residents have also been incarcerated and deported — many without criminal charges or due process hearings — raising alarm among foreigners considering travel to the U.S., as well as those already here.
Dozens of people are currently living in Juneau — and many more throughout Alaska — after fleeing unsafe situations in their home countries, according to organizations and officials who have helped them relocate. Federal officials have already gone beyond notices to deport some people, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting a Philippine national in Kodiak earlier this month and a Mexican citizen in Sitka last month. Four current and recent University of Alaska’s Anchorage students also had their visas revoked recently.
Ana’s son, Daniel, received legal citizenship in February of 2023 and was hoping to start a medical career after recently graduating college. But he said he’s questioning whether he can safely remain in the U.S. or will be better off joining other family members in Canada.
“With what I’m seeing going on, even citizens are not really covered at the moment,” he said. “So I’m definitely watching and being aware of things that are happening, and possibly having a plan B on whether I should be doing that. But I just recently applied for my passport and it’s on the way, so I think that’s probably the first step towards being ready to get out of here.”
Sharing a video forces family to flee Venezuela
Isabella — speaking with assistance from an interpreter and whose interview was translated with the aid of computer software — said Trump sounded like he wanted to help families like hers while he was campaigning for a second term.
“When we were in Venezuela, we saw Trump as the possible way out of the dictatorship,” she said. “He was always threatening (our) president with intervention when we knew Trump was going to run for president and that he could possibly win. We thought he was going to help my country a lot and help us here. And when he talked about deportations, we thought he was referring to criminals, people in trouble with the law, but we didn’t think he was going to do it to everyone. It really never crossed our minds that this was going to happen.”
The situation for her family in Venezuela became life-threatening after her husband posted a video online that raised questions about the company he worked for, Isabella said. She said officials tried to seize him, forcing him into hiding, and the family ultimately decided in the spring of 2023 the only safe option was to flee the country. Traveling west into Colombia and up toward Central America was the most feasible route.
But crossing Colombia meant a long journey on foot through a jungle that was just the beginning of their hardships.
“We spent six days and five nights walking through that jungle experiencing everything because you see dead bodies, drowned children, people, whatever — all the worst you can imagine,” Isabella said. “It happened to us in the jungle. My husband almost lost his life helping our child. My daughter was almost swept away by the river. The trip was horrible.”
By the time the family crossed the border into Panama, they had no money or food, but they also had their first encounter with people who gave them hope.
“Some people we met in Panama helped us, they welcomed us, they gave us jobs,” Isabella said. “We stayed there for seven months until we recovered, to save money to be able to continue the trip.”
The family considered staying in Panama since they heard terrible stories about cartels in Mexico, but “it was impossible to get a work permit in Panama.” She said it was very expensive to live there, and immigration officials were aggressive with their inquiries during chance encounters.
“We spent seven months fighting that and we couldn’t settle in Panama, we had no way to do it, and so we decided to continue,” Isabella said.
Their hardships continued while passing through Guatemala as they were stopped by police repeatedly and then robbed when they were pulled off a bus by immigration officials, she said.
“It was many weeks of walking, many kilometers,” she said. “My feet were bleeding. We suffered from hunger, horrific thirst, until we arrived in Oaxaca. We worked there for a month because we no longer had money and we saved up to go up to Mexico City.”
They stayed in Mexico City for five months, where they had to request appointments daily to get legal permission to enter the U.S. under a refugee program authorized by then-President Joe Biden.
“I was only able to work for two months because a Venezuelan woman who had made an appointment was kidnapped near us and she was found dead a week later very close to where we lived,” Isabella said. “So for safety reasons my husband wouldn’t let my daughter or me leave the place we were renting, only him. He was the one who went out to work and came back. He didn’t want us to go out.”
In May of 2024 — more than a year after they fled their home country — the family got permission to enter the U.S. But Isabella said they didn’t have money to fly to their designated point of entry, so they were forced to take a bus that was stopped frequently by police. There was also one encounter where people believed to be cartel members stopped the bus and demanded any money the passengers were carrying, while Isabella’s daughter remained hidden under clothing on the bus.
Ultimately, they made it safely to their entry point.
“Immigration took good care of us very well, it was a good experience, thank God,” Isabella said. “They gave us our documents and we were able to cross.”
The family’s initial destination was Denver, but the people they were supposed to meet there were going through a family crisis, she said. That’s when an acquaintance told them about Juneau and loaned the family money for airplane tickets. Upon arrival, local officials working with other arriving refugees “really convinced us that this was the safest place and the best place to stay,” she said.
“As soon as we arrived, we managed to apply for work permits, which were approved,” Isabella said. “My husband immediately started working and a few days later my daughter started high school. Everything was normal, everything was as God intended. Everyone got their IDs, licenses and everything as the law requires.”
Those feelings took an abrupt turn for the worse when the family received the “Notice of Termination” earlier this month.
“I felt like something big was going to step on me and that it was really all over,” Isabella said. “My daughter started to cry, she got depressed, and had trouble sleeping.”
However, the family has been advised by an attorney that their legal status is still valid and, while Isabella said she knows other Venezuelan residents in the U.S. who are terrified after receiving the letters, said for now they are not planning to uproot their lives yet again.
“Our plan so far is to stay here and to have faith in God, because I know that it is God who brought us alive here and is who will allow us to stay and will allow us to win our asylum,” she said.
Haitian family arrives over the years, departs within days
Ana said her brother was the first to come to Juneau more than a decade ago, followed by her parents who were hoping for a quiet retirement. She joined them afterward to help support her parents and establish a safe life for herself. Her two children remained behind in Haiti with a relative for a time, but arrived a few years later when other relatives — including her sister and a niece — also started facing dangerous circumstances.
While there are multiple refugee families from some countries such as Ukraine living in Juneau, Ana said she isn’t aware of other Haitians living here — which is comforting.
”It’s just our family here,” she said. “Nobody knows us. It’s good for us. We are safe.”
Her son Daniel said they keep in touch with other Haitian refugees in the U.S. via online networks so they’re aware of current developments and what their rights are as the legality of their status is challenged. But what they learned was concerning enough that five members of the family — a couple and their three children ages 12, 10 and 8 — fled to join another family member already in Canada earlier this month.
“They said if they were by themselves they could stay, but because of the kids they don’t want anything bad to happen to them (that would) leave the kids behind,” Ana said.
Ana, who’s working as an educator and wants to open a design business if she can get her legal status extended, said the Trump administration’s demands to leave the country make little sense given the legal steps her family has taken and been assured are still valid.
“We don’t really know American politics enough to know (ahead of time) what can happen after,” she said. “And we don’t really know anything about the law…we don’t know anything about politics.…we know we have papers to work (and) we are here for two years.”
Ana said she’s hoping her youngest daughter can finish high school next year, “and she can study and become whatever she wants to.” And her niece, Roseline, in her mid-20s, says she would like to open a Haitian restaurant in Juneau if she’s allowed to stay. While Trump’s order was for refugees to depart on April 24, Daniel said he doesn’t expect law enforcement to show up at his family’s home the next day. But many members of his family aren’t willing to take that chance.
“From what we’ve heard with Juneau being pretty far from all of that stuff, not a lot of ICE agents come up here, it’s pretty unlikely,” he said. “But at the same time I don’t think we would stay and try to find out, you know what I mean?”
What’s not safe or realistic, family members said, is the demands of Trump and his supporters to just go home.
“Every gangster, they’re walking safely in the street and then the population has to hide somewhere,” Roseline said. “I have a friend — they just burned his house with his grandparents inside.”
Daniel said he’s found people in Juneau to generally be supportive of his family’s effort to settle here, unlike some parts of the U.S., where migrants are largely perceived as a negative presence.
“We come here from different cultures, but we usually assimilate pretty well, and this country was built on the backs of immigrants and immigration,” he said. “So we’re here to be good neighbors and help each other out and help the community get better.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
